Posts by Youngdog

Barclays Bank signs 100k license Copilot deal with Microsoft

100k Barclays staff getting co-pilot

That does go against the prevailing view in banking that staff are risks to be mitigated and meatbags are the weakest link. Grabbing the popcorn for this one.

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

Why is anyone taking him seriously?

It's obvious (to me anyway) the dig at Farage was only done to wriggle off the hook for the $100m donation to Reform.

He's completely full of it (and 'it' doesn't refer to 'great ideas' BTW)

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Ruddy Fast Start

Took me much longer than it should to convince our PHBs this thing was impeding deployments and causing high OS uptimes. They then claimed it was too much effort to switch off. Cobblers, it's a simple one-liner.

About that Windows Installer 'make me admin' security hole. Here's how it's exploited

msiscan in github

A python script that runs on Linux. That's great, unless you are windows-only admin in prod ops. The sort of people that need this most. Now I have to stay up all night and figure out how I'm going to do this in PowerShell.

Elon Musk is suing OpenAI again, claims CEO Sam Altman ‘betrayed’ him

Putting a price on altruism

Wanting all the money in the world and never being satisfied with your lot does sound exhausting. I hope it’s a lot of fun or I really can’t see the point.

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

What Captchas do

Mouse gestures, internet history - take a sniff under the hood at what happens when you click ‘ok’ and it’s frightening

The question ‘Are you a robot?’ has always had a delicious irony about it

How to maintain code for a century: Just add Rust

Huh?

You are having a pop about someone being innately curious enough to learn a new programming language? It's not like he went on record saying "Code? I'd rather eat my own feet. What do you think we pay these weirdos to do all day!"

Windows NT on a whole new platform: PowerMac

Seeing that NT startup screen

I cut my teeth on NT4 in my first IT role and it taught me most of what i still know today about Windows. I think Windows 11 is ok and I can do a lot with it, but only NT4 would whistle Boney M's 'Rasputin' while dancing the hopak if if I asked it to

It's 2023, so Lenovo made a bendy smartphone concept all about hybrid cloud AI

I like it

I think there is something in the context-dependent hardware approach not available in apple and other products. Making it dumb and linked to an ai butler bot makes sense too

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

Re: Benchmark of AI

We haven't yet reached the point of being able to define the requirements of 'good behaviour' for humans

Whaaaat? I thought Bill and Ted nailed this back in '89

"Be excellent to each other"

First ever 64-bit version of Windows rediscovered … and a C compiler for it too

Re: Actualy came across a 64-bit XP on a customer site.

I helped get XP64 up and working at my place for a specific business problem. Worked so well the firm dropped plans to support Win7 32-bit and the whole place went to 64-bit instead. Which was nice.

Modern life is rubbish – so why not take a trip down memory lane with Windows File Manager?

Winfile.exe

Very handy for kicking users out of files when that was a problem back in the day

Ubuntu 17.10 pulled: Linux OS knackers laptop BIOSes, Intel kernel driver fingered

Re: Lenovo does not sell laptops with Ubuntu

Sorry Wayne

https://certification.ubuntu.com/certification/make/Lenovo/

Bombastic boss gave insane instructions to sensible sysadmin, with client on speakerphone

MS Office and reg keys

A week into a new job and I was shadowing the 'senior' engineer whose response to any Excel error/crash was to uninstall and reinstall MS Office.

He gave me a withering look when I suggested all he was doing was removing and putting back a mostly static set of files and HKLM reg keys and he should be nosing around profile/HKCU instead.

Couldn't stop myself smirking though when 30-40 minutes and one seriously p**sed off user later the exact same error popped up.

Boffins find evidence of strange uranium-producing bacteria lurking underground

Re: Maximus the Confessor

"Yes I confess - I just nicked Panodorus of Alexandria's date"

Re: The usual baloney

"I have personally transmuted palladium into silver"

See, I've done a few very cool things and tried my hardest to fill my life with varied experiences and achievements (and plenty for the benefit of others too) but none of them come close to sounding as cool as that. Is your first name Zaphod?

Microsoft founder Paul Allen reveals world's biggest-ever plane

It's his I.T. background...

..resilience by design

Intel gives the world a Core i9 desktop CPU to play with

But I don't want more cores!

I want that 4.3GHz clock speed of the 7740X with the memory support and PCIe capacity of the other two.

Can someone who knows more than I obviously do about CPU/Chipset architecture please explain why Intel won't let me have my cake and eat it?

IBM marketeers rub out chopper after visit from CEO Ginni

Hmmm, an Aérospatiale/Eurocopter Dauphin 2...

...I guess IBM aren't on-board with the whole 'Hire American, Buy American' theme then

Wannacry: Everything you still need to know because there were so many unanswered Qs

Re: Oh, the irony!

Even the best advice in the world can become bad advice if the situation changes. Just because they are wrong now doesn't mean it was wrong then.

Microsoft to spooks: WannaCrypt was inevitable, quit hoarding

Re: Its like the Millennium Bug all over again

Joined-up thinking in a huge multinational company? NEVER!!!! ;-)

Its like the Millennium Bug all over again

Because of the media coverage on Friday our Group CIO ordered ALL servers (regardless of criticality and our internal change process) to be patched by EO the weekend. In the last 2 days literally 100s of people have worked their b***ocks off to get that done - now (so far, fingers crossed, touch wood) we have seen no issues all that effort will be tomorrows chip wrapping. It's the life we've chosen I'm afraid.

Linux 4.11 delayed for a week by NVMe glitches and 'oops fixes'

“but it just doesn't feel right.”

The Golden rule of managing tech - if in doubt, don't.

Despite what the the PHBs, Beancounters (and, sometimes, End Users) say whatever it is can wait another week without the sky falling in - they may not thank you for it but don't forget they would all be lining up to throw you under the bus if pushing $whatever out early created issues

Microsoft raises pistol, pulls the trigger on Windows 7, 8 updates for new Intel, AMD chips

Re: unless you are a Corporate Customer

Vendors have already lined up 'Skabylake' - 6th Gen Processor in backward compatible 7th Gen chipset for enterprise customers not ready to make the jump from Win7. Offer only lasts until Skylakes are unavailable.

Aviation regulator flies in face of UK.gov ban, says electronics should be stowed in cabin. Duh

Re: re: re: I'm confused now,

It's classified

You have the right to be informed: Write to UK.gov, save El Reg

Re: Unprecedented?

"persuade" publishers to "voluntarily" sign up to this new regulator

'Coercion' was the word I used in my submission to gov.uk

How Google.org stole the Christmas Spirit

Take the chromebooks...

..install Tails and use them to teach kids about online security and safe browsing. Probably the best education you could give them in this day and age.

How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order

Re: Ha! Our first Rouge of the day!

Well spotted - Merry Christmoose!

It feels like Star Wars but...

...there is a whole fan base for the Prequels that I just don't relate to because I'm too old. For me A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back are Star Wars and Rogue One looks like the world I was in aged 8 with my Kenner AT-AT. I think a lot people who liked Force Awakens are not going to get as much fun out of Rouge One as I did. Great job.

Re: on that (lack of) accuracy claim:

Accurate =/= Precise

Obi-wan noted the marks on the Sandcrawler were precisely 2" away and to the left of where they were aimed for. How's that for pedantic AC?

AI brains take a step closer to understanding speech just like humans

@Rich 11

'There is a red building...in front of a green lawn...mowed recently'

Hey guys - we're getting somewhere...

'There's a fence in front of the house'

DOH!

King's College London staggers from outage, replaces infrastructure services head

there but for the grace of God...

Come on, we've all dropped that one massive bollock at some point

Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile

I once spent half a morning...

..trying to help a v. senior manager reset his domain password. After literally 1/2 a dozen rounds of him calling up, me unlocking the account, resetting the password to his desired choice (you're not allowed to do that any more!) it finally dawned on me what the problem was and I was able to close the ticket with the following comment;

" User cannot spell 'February' "

Emulating x86: Microsoft builds granny flat into Windows 10

Re: Cart before the horse

Like DrXym I've got a couple of Atom Z3735 devices and the Linx 7 isn't much bigger than a Phablet. After the failure of RT and with the new Atom x3/5/7 out I can't help but think Microsoft missed a trick not going with x64/x86 phones. It would have then been a relative doddle to put ARM emulation on top of that.

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

Witless idiots

Not just instructions - pop ups too. It still mystifies me how some people can override the brain's unfaulting habit of automatically turning jumbled shapes into words without any conscious effort - but only when those jumbled shapes are presented in a little rectangle on a screen

"Error message? Yeah something popped up but dunno what it said - I just hit 'Cancel'. So why doesn't it work?"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGHHH!!!!

FYI Apple fans – iCloud slurps your call histories

Not all bad

I only use iCloud for contacts and an .icloud.com mail address but found it quite useful that my recent call history was restored to a replacement after the last one was stolen

NHS IT bod sends test email to 850k users – and then responses are sent 'reply all'

Disable Reply to All

Why is it that those most prone to complaining about unwanted emails cluttering up their mailbox inevitably hit 'Reply to All' thus cluttering up everyone else's mailbox! An over developed sense of irony? Tragic lack of self-awareness? Or (as I suspect) is it just an unquenchable need to let other people know how busy and/or important they think they are.

Microsoft: Watch out millennials for evil Security Essentials

Re: I know this is all based on user ignorance, but..

Corporates still running XP will undoubtedly not be using Security Essentials but the number of two-bob Home used by everyone else is a disaster waiting to happen.

BSOD screensaver...

...oh the fun we used to have with that in my NT4 days! I really should have updated my username to old-fart dog by now.

Is Google using YouTube to put one over on Samsung?

Re: So to summarise..

As someone who did sit on a mountain recently (Kilimanjaro, last week) I have no problem with 'the sky' not being limited to something above me...

So to summarise..

..'the sky' is the bit of the atmosphere that appears blue due to Rayleigh Scattering

UK copyright troll weeps, starts 20-week stretch in the cooler for beating up Uber driver

Re: Grunchy

wait, wait, wait - you get paid to eat cheezies? Teach me Senpai!

iPhone 7 first fondle

I copped a feel of the cheap looking Jet Black handset today in O2 and was just glad I had a 6s.

Phoney bling ring pinged by Tolkien's kin

Re: That depends where and what part

The first proper book I read was The Wizard of Oz so it's a shame I'll never get to read those. Or learn Russian.

Honor 8: Huawei targets millennials with high-spec cheapie. 3 words – Food pic mode

Wow

Screen and USB aside they are great specs. It's probably cutting corners like those though that's providing the margin. And that processor,in house, looks like a masterstroke.

Apple kills its Stores

It's probably to remove confusion with App Store

Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.

Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

"The average person who is not a developer who tries to install Linux on an average box usually fails, because there is no working graphics driver, or mouse driver, etc. for some part of their machine."

This was last true 5-10 years ago